Last week we announced the brand new Fulfillment Dashboard. It’s going to help anyone managing more than a single store. This week we wanted to talk a little more about what it does.

The Fulfillment Dashboard isn’t going to just pull in all the orders, from all your stores, into one dash. It’s going to allow you to export, from one dash. This means that no matter how many stores you have, whether it’s 2 or 200, you’ll only be doing one export. This doesn’t mean just bookkeeping. It means shipping too. Stamps and Endicia will work in the Fulfillment Dash. So you’ll never need to log into each store to ship out items again.

Well what about the Pre-Order feature? That works in the Fulfillment Dashboard too!

The Fulfillment Dashboard can help with creating new stores as well. Since it controls all the shipping and tax rates, any new stores hooked to the Fulfillment Dash, automatically get those settings. This mean you only need to set it up once.

Last week we announced a very cool feature that’s going to help you with Pre-orders. This week we’re going to switch gears and talk about features for Fulfillment companies.

Firstly, let’s explain what a fulfillment company is. A fulfillment company is a warehousing, and shipping service that will house all your physical goods, and when an order comes in, they’ll pull it, and ship it. Sometimes these fulfillment companies, also have the capability of printing merchandise like T-Shirts, Sweatshirts, Banners, etc. For instance, in the US there’s Second City Prints run by Stevie Hopkins and his 20+ employees. And in the UK there’s Awesome Merchandise run by Charlotte and Luke Hodson. These 2 great companies are examples of fulfillment companies, that also print merchandise, and that use Limited Run to power all their stores. But there’s something that a few companies have started to realize. If you fulfill your own orders, for your own store, you can become a small fulfillment company for friends and associates, because you’re already setup to fulfill. For instance, Run For Cover Records expanded from fulfilling their own orders for their Boston based record label, to some of the artists that have signed to their label. They’re even fulfilling our friends at Bad Timing Records.

These 3 are just a few of the companies that use Limited Run to power more than one store. So we’re extremely proud to announce a feature that’s going to make all their lives easier. That feature is the Fulfillment Dashboard.

Fulfillment Dashboard

This feature is going to allow you to fulfill more than one store, from a single dashboard. Over the next couple weeks we’re going to get into exactly what it can do, but the most important thing it does, is cost nothing! When you’re on v3, you can use the Fulfillment Dashboard for free. We’re just trying to make the lives easier, of anyone running more than one store. We’re also hoping this feature will make you want to open another store, or help other people run their store.

Last week we announced a Tracking Number Importer. It’s going to solve the problem that arises, when you need to ship out a lot of orders, and don’t want to manually add the tracking numbers. The example we gave was when a preorder ships. Pre-orders are a stressful time, and we’re doing our best to make your lives easier. That’s what we’re going for with v3. Make your lives easier, by reducing the work you put into running your store. You might also see a pattern with our announcements. They all seem to be connected, in some way. For instance, we just mentioned how the new Tracking Number Importer, is going to work great for shipping preorders. And the feature we’re announcing this week, is actually called Pre-Order!

All a pre-order is, is a an order that doesn’t get immediately shipped out. The standard reason is the release date for the album hasn’t been reached yet, but you want to start selling the album now. Seems simple right? It is, but there's just one issue. When you take an order, that order goes into your Unshipped section. Whether it’s a preorder or not. Which means if you want to continue shipping out non pre-orders, you need to sift through the section like a gold panner. With the new Pre-Order feature, we’ve solved that problem. Here’s how:

Pre-Order

We said easier, right? All you need to do is check the box, and then any order containing that product, will get sent to a new area in your Sales Section called "Pre-Order".

Another really cool part of this feature, is how it's handled in the cart:

Any order containing a product on Pre-Order, will have "Pre-Order" written next to that product in the cart.

Now you might be asking, "Well what happens when the product is off pre-order, and you want to ship them out?" Well, that's easy too. Just go into the product, and uncheck the box. Then all those orders containing the product, will immediately move to the Unshipped section!

And the last part of this feature we'd like to tell you about is how it's retroactive. So when we launch v3 (hopefully in about a month), you can go into any product that you currently have on Pre-Order, and check the box. This will move all past orders into the Pre-Order section. And immediately clean up that Unshipped section. Whoa!

Last week we announced Stamps.com integration, and this week we’re going to stick with the shipping theme and talk about tracking numbers.

Right now if you want to include a tracking number in the shipped email you send to your customer, you have to do it one at a time. That’s a rough process when shipping out 500 preorders. So for v3, we thought it was a good idea to solve this shipping stumbling block.

Tracking Number Import

What’s great about this importer is it’s so simple. All you need is the tracking numbers, and the order numbers. We’ll connect the dots after the import. Then just Ship them. Another cool thing about this importer, is when used in conjunction with Stamps or Endicia, they can export you the exact info you need.

Our first two feature announcements have gone over real well with everyone. We're getting a lot of great feedback and even people asking to switch now! Hopefully v3 will be out at the end of February, beginning of March. That's what we're shooting for. Till then though, we're going to keep announcing more features.

This week that feature announcement is Stamps.com integration!

Stamps.com

We've had Endicia for a while, and a lot of people have asked us about Stamps.com. So we're super happy to have this available in v3.

If you don't know what either of these services are, we can explain. Both are postage on demand services, that allow you to bulk buy and print shipping labels for your packages. These services are great for shipping a lot of packages in one fell swoop. It's something that would make your life a million times easier, when shipping out a preorder.

The other really cool thing these services usually provide is a discount on shipping costs. They're sort of like a Mass Mailer, in a way. Since they're buying tons of postage from USPS, USPS gives them a discount, and then they pass part of that discount onto you. It might only be a couple percent, but that adds up when you're shipping a lot of packages.